


I Won't Fade Away

by Schwoozie



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Action, Badass Beth, F/M, Filming Spoilers, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 03:49:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2094558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Living doesn't get easier. But you get stronger.</p><p>Beth escapes the hospital and finds Daryl along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Won't Fade Away

**Author's Note:**

> ****THIS FIC IS BASED ON FILMING SPOILERS****
> 
> This is completely and utterly jennifercarolyn's fault for encouraging me. Thanks to milkshakemicrowave as always for beta'ing.
> 
> I don't usually pair music with my fics, but for this one, once you get past the action part, I really suggest you listen to "Grace" by Kate Havenik. It's absolutely gorgeous, and the most Beth song to ever Beth.
> 
> Warnings for canon-typical violence.

One night in that endless winter on the road, Beth lay by Lori and Carol and pretended to sleep.

It hadn't been much time since the farm, a few weeks at most, but Beth was already carrying those women inside her like they were her own blood. Carol reminded Beth of the widows she'd known, fragile and trembling but with steel in their veins, the kind that absorbs shock to make itself stronger. In Lori she'd seen something of her mama—how could she not, the way the older woman held her as she cried, looked after her, thought enough to care that a steak knife had gone missing? She was dark while Annette was fair, and far more quick-tongued, but sometimes Lori would look at her and Beth would feel like she was the baby growing inside her—cradled and warm and loved, like a daughter should be. She emerged from that womb right along with Judith, the day Lori died—squalling and motherless but with a grip that could grind bones.

They didn't know Beth was awake when they whispered in the dark. Not about the before, but the _during_ —those horrible days when they were still half the people they'd always been, when their old lives weren't quite old yet. Lori told Carol what Shane had told her (and that's why they wait for the rest to sleep, of course, because the specter of Shane hung over all of them like a ghost that appears when you speak its name in the mirror), what he'd told her about the hospital where Rick was supposed to die. About the panic, the guards, the bodies in hallways and innocent people gunned down in their beds. And the screams—the way he _talked_ about the screams—and the way Lori said that, Beth could understand how the woman might have fallen a little bit in love with him.

Beth had never seen much of hospitals. Even before the turn gave her daddy a new clientele, he'd been all the doctor the family needed. He didn't put much stock in state institutions anyway; didn't trust a man in white with what he could do with his own two hands. Not even Shawn and her mama's illness shook that resolve. _Suffering belongs to the home, just like everything else,_ he'd say. They might have suffered longer, but they didn't suffer alone.

Now she knows the world of hospitals inside out. If they were anything like they are now, her daddy was right to have feared them.

She holds Lori's fire in her heart as tightly as she clutches the pistol in her hands, peering around the corner into chaos. She doesn't know what started it—she'd been deep in the bowels of the hospital; Officer Kowalski had caught her squirreling away supplies when the screams started.

It's Officer Kowalski's gun she's holding, Officer Kowalski's blood splattered on the front of her scrubs, Officer Kowalski's dying body that had afforded her a chance to get away.

She can't think about that right now, about what it makes her. She's made herself a lot of things, these past weeks.

“Beth, what are we going to do?” Marie hisses, clutching the hem of Beth's shirt. They're huddled behind the building, a dozen of them—young girls with stories like Beth's, ripped from their families because they look weak and subservient enough to break. Among them are a half dozen more—a young soldier missing an arm and an old woman missing a lung, all the patients Beth had found that were still alive. She didn't have time to check all of the rooms before walkers flooded the halls. She thinks of Rick, abandoned at the end of the world, and prays that anyone left behind has half of his fortitude.

Now the patients cling to the nurses, girls made women under Beth's commanding glare, all looking to her, all waiting.

Beth's heart pounds in her ears as she peers around the corner again. Gunshots are being fired back and forth, and very few at the walkers—she can't see the gunmen from where she is, but it seems like the fighting is concentrated around the gate and the main door. If they can slip past, there's a grove of peach trees by the fence—it had been Beth's planned escape route, when her wrist fully healed. She doesn't know if all of them can make the climb, doesn't even know if she can—she knows even less if they'll be able to make it that far—but she'll try. God, the way she failed last time—with Judith, with the kids—she has to try.

“Listen to me,” she hisses. “There's a grove of trees a few hundred meters that way, along the fence. When I say so, I need y'all to _run_. No matter what you see, no matter what happens, you don't stop running till you reach those trees. Anyone falls behind, I'll help them—y'all just get to that fence.”

“But Beth,” says Shannon, “we can't let you do that on your own—“

“Then don't fall behind!” she snaps. “This is our only shot, you got that? And we're all gonna make it, every last one of us, if I have to carry you myself.” She looks from person to person, shooting glances over her shoulder every few moments. The fighting is getting closer to them. “Can you do this for me?”

“Yes,” they all reply, together, as if they'd been trained to. Beth feels a twinge in her gut, understands a little why Daryl worked so hard to look down on her hope. It's terrifying for people to have this much faith in you.

“Ok,” Beth says, swallowing a hysterical sob down to the pit of her stomach. She looks around the corner, sights the nearest walker, raises her gun. “One, two, three—go!”

Beth downs the walker and they dash past her, running and hobbling as fast as they can. Beth fires three more rounds before following, running as fast as her feet will take her.

It's only a few dozen steps before the first girl goes down.

The walker lunges at Eloise from behind a parked van, and Beth can't even raise her gun before it sinks its teeth into her neck, drawing forth a blood curdling scream and shrieks from the other girls. Beth screams at the top of her lungs to keep going, keep going, don't look back—

And suddenly machine gun fire erupts at their feet and an elderly cancer patient is shot to pieces.

“Get down!” Beth yells, throwing herself behind a car. Only Marie and Lisa hear her—the rest of them keep running, one falling every few steps as they're gunned down from the hospital roof.

“Why are they doing this?” Marie shrieks, tears streaming down her face, again clenching at Beth's sleeve. Beth shakes her off harshly and scans the building, looking for the telltale glare of the gun against the hot Georgia sky.

“Crap,” she whispers even as she finds it, knowing the best shot in the world couldn't down it with a pistol at this distance.

She peeks over the car at the fighting around the gate. One of a grouping of ambulances has caught fire, flooding the lot with smoke, but through it Beth can see muzzle flares from at least half a dozen guns, moving fast between the cars. None of them have turned towards the girls, seeming focused on the hospital.

As Beth watches, a burly man with a mustache materializes out of the smoke—a rocket launcher balanced on his shoulder. He crouches, aims, and the machine gunner is blown to smithereens.

“It's clear, go, go!” Beth hollers, shoving Marie and Lisa forward and leaping after them, running low and fast to Shannon where she's pulling herself along the ground, a bullet wound in her thigh.

“Com'mon, com'mon,” Beth pants, heaving her up and throwing her arm over her shoulder. “Just a few—“

Something barrels into them and Beth falls hard, rolling instinctively to soften the blow and avoid the teeth that snap shut inches from her elbow. She lands on her back and throws her arm up to just barely catch the walker across the collarbone with her injured arm.

She _screams_ as she feels the bones in her wrist re-fracture, panting in fury as the walker scrabbles for her. It's a woman, newly dead and strong, throwing itself upon her with all its weight, gnashing teeth inches from her nose as Beth scrambles for her gun, just out of reach. Marie is gone and Beth's lungs full of smoke and she'll be damned if she survived all this to be done in by this _bitch_ of a walker—

Just as her arm is about to buckle an arrow sprouts from the creature's eye.

Beth's hold gives way and the walker slumps on top of her, impossibly heavy on Beth's shattered wrist as tears stream from her eyes, her lip bloody from where she bit it against the pain. It's only a few moments before the twice-dead woman's acrid breath makes Beth's stomach churn, and she heaves the walker off of herself, climbs shakily to her feet. Shannon is back on the ground and staring at her in shock, she sees Marie and Lisa have nearly made it to the trees and through the smoke—

The smoke billows and furls and falls away to reveal a man on the other side of the ambulances, drenched in blood, crossbow still taut and raised as he stares at Beth like she's the second coming.

 _Maybe I am_ , Beth thinks with a hint of hysteria as the world slows to a crawl, _I died—I died and he's a ghost but God I couldn't take that, please don't let him be dead too—_

But he still stands there, solid as life, bloody and dirty and _Daryl_.

Beth's taken a single, shaky step forward when the something in the ambulances ignites and they blast towards the sky.

She stumbles back from the force of the blast, blinking rapidly, but it's Shannon's cry that spurs her to action. Wrenching her gaze from where she'd seen him, she once again pulls Shannon to her feet, still blinded by tears and the blood the walker had dripped on her face.

“We're almost there,” she pants, wiping the blood from her eyes; “We're almost there.”

* * *

Beth arranges the triage center in a clearing in the woods, several miles out of Atlanta. She'd come upon enough able-bodied survivors to defend the camp as well as scout for supplies, and anyone else in need of help. Even so, the fall back is not impressive, and the only thing she can offer the wounded is binding, water, and comfort.

Beth herself has stripped down to her tank top, even in the chill weather, the rest of her clothing sacrificed for bandages as she moves among the rows. One of the men with burn wounds had been an ambulance driver; in between labored pants he explained to her the rudiments of triage—the expectant dead, the walking wounded—and she's done the best she can. More of them are alive than dead, at least; and they all have strict orders on what to do with the dead.

Beth's own wrist throbs under its rapidly wrapped bandage; she'd tried not to look at the blackened skin when she bound it, instead chugging water and enough painkillers to keep going. She remembers what Maggie told her of their daddy, those horrible days of the prison flu, the things he said… a broken wrist isn't a threat to life, not like that infection was, but she hopes he'd be proud anyway.

Beth wipes her forehead wearily and sinks down beside Marie. She'd been nearly to the tree line when she caught a bullet in the arm. It had been bleeding sluggishly, so Beth gave her a compress and told her to sit down until she could get to her. The girl's hand is coated in blood, but not a life threatening amount—Beth chocks up her blank stare to shock.

“How are you feeling?” Beth asks, words slightly slurred by the pain medication. She moves Marie's hand gently and is pleased to see the wound has begun to clot. The bullet went clean through, so all it needs is cleaning and binding.

“Everyone I know is dead,” she says, staring listlessly at the sky. Beth remembers that Eloise had been her sister. Once, that might have broken her heart.

Beth takes her hands from the wound for a moment and cups Marie's face, forcing her to look at her.

“But _you_ aren't,” she says.

Marie looks up at her, wordless. There's some sort of commotion at the edge of the camp, but it doesn't sound violent, so Beth leaves it be.

“You gonna finish the job for them? Cause I can leave you here and help someone else. If you're gonna live, you have to decide to _want_ it.”

“Does it get easier?” Marie whispers, “after that?”

Beth feels a prickling on the back of her neck, like she's being watched; she looks up, and he's there again, without the smoke, without the dust. Standing behind the rows of wounded, blood coated and cracked across his front, an angry slash along his forehead. He's staring at her, crossbow in hand, fingers white-knuckled against the black carbon. Even from this distance, she can see the tears on his cheeks.

“No,” Beth says, looking down, ripping off a strip of fabric. “But you get stronger.”

* * *

Before all this, Beth had never broken a bone in her life. She never had much chance—she rode, but never after dark; she drove five under the speed limit and declined to play sports and watched from the sidelines as her friends threw themselves into the creek. Beth didn't see it as cowardice so much as taking care of herself. Let Maggie have the adventure, the rough and tumble life—Beth was content baking pies in her mama's kitchen, reading books by the radiator on cold nights, warming her nose in her cat's ginger fur.

Those days feel beyond a lifetime ago as Beth squints at her wrist in the dim glow of the fire, shivering too violently to wrap the bandage as tight as it needs to be. Her wrist has swollen to twice its normal size; she knows if she doesn't find a professional soon, it will never heal properly. They had found one or two of the hospital staff willing to come quietly—most of the people there had been good people, after all, just corrupted by a bad system. But when night had fallen and the wounded were still being tended, Beth decided it could wait until morning. She doesn't know if she can handle the touch of some stranger, now that she's finally come back in control of her self.

She doesn't know he's there until he's already settled beside her, and then only because his hand reaches out to brush her shoulder, trailing for a moment across the goosebumps. He circles a hand around her arm, and she silently passes the bindings to him; lets her head hang low as he winds it expertly around her limb, making it strong.

When he finishes he swings his leather jacket off his back (and she must ask what happened to his vest—knows how absurdly lost she feels, without those wings leading the way) and settles it across her shoulders, tucking it in with care. Then he turns along with her to the fire. They sit close enough that she can feel him when they breathe, expanding in tandem, bumping into each other like fumbling balloons. Beth closes her eyes.

“I left the rest of them back at the hospital,” Daryl says, softly. The night is too mournful for anything more. “Didn't say I'd seen you. Didn't believe it myself.” He looks at her shyly, through his bangs. “I'd seen ya before, but it's never been you. Every day I've seen you.”

“Who's with you?” Beth asks.

“Everyone,” he says, and a tear slides down her face at the sound of that word, the timbre of it, the growl that settles low in the base of her spine, boosts her up, clears her sight. The word in the voice that she'd listened to every evening before bed, and dashing across a flaming yard. The voice that tucked her in at night, gave her peace.

“Maggie? Rick?”

“And Judith.”

Beth looks at him then, and he's close—too close to comprehend, after so long so far, his beard grown out and hair brushing his shoulders but so solidly him that her scattered heart breaks a bit.

Joy, she realizes, can shatter you as cleanly as despair.

“Judith,” she whispers, tears on her face. And he knows. He knows.

Tentatively, he reaches across her body to take her uninjured hand. She holds him back with a grip that grinds his knuckles together, but he doesn't seem to mind; just rests their entwined hands on her knee, his shoulder on hers.

“I saw you too,” Beth whispers. “You were the only thing I saw.”

“I'm sorry Beth.”

“Don't,” she says, putting her head on his shoulder; closing her tired eyes. “Don't.”

“A'right.” A pause. “You were amazin', Beth.”

“I wasn't,” she murmurs.

“You are.” She feels his lips where her skin meets the hairline; they brush against her with every word. “You try. I've never seen no one try like you do.”

“I couldn't get them out,” she whispers.

Beth tastes tears on her lips. She doesn't know if they're his or hers.

“You got you out. You got back ta me.”

Beth snorts quietly. “Am I really that important?”

Daryl goes very still, and she looks up at him. She sees candles in his eyes, and moonshine, and pigs feet. She sees a thousand dusty roads and a hundred winding trails he's walked down where she hasn't been; she sees the sleepless nights and sunburned days; she sees a house at the end of the lane at the edge of his mind, in the deepest corner where light still shines; she sees herself, as she is. She sees him seeing her. She sees them.

“Oh,” she says.

“Yeah,” he murmurs.

He holds her close till morning.


End file.
